McDermott on Congress/IRS: Get truth, don’t go crazy

Republicans ramped up the hyperbole as a just-fired acting U.S. Internal Revenue Service director underwent a four-hour grilling Friday before the House Ways & Means Committee.

Rep. Dave Rreichert, R-Wash., railed against “the blatant abuse of power” in allegedly targeting Tea Party groups for audit. “They (IRS brass) refused to identify who was ultimately responsible for the blatant abuse of power in targeting conservative groups in processing tax-exempt applications,” he declared late Friday.

The Tea Party has grown tepid of late, and it is in Republicans’ interest to heat up this part of the base and feed their local radio talk show hosts. Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, is talking of President Obama as a “tyrannical despot.” Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., claims a clamor back home for Obama’s impeachment.

Reichert is a more sensible sort, but still grandstanding and booking his KIRO Radio gigs. He sits on Ways & Means.

Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., a fellow committee member, was just as critical of the IRS. But McD suggested a notion that has become old-fashioned lately on Capitol Hill: Work this through and get the truth. Here is a little bit of what he said:

“The IRS is an easy, perhaps the easiest, agency to unite against. Who doesn’t want to pick up a pitch fork when we see the taxman coming? And with our 24-hour media cycle passing around the lighter fluid, I think getting to the facts, and fixing the mistakes, can get lost.

“There is a difference between stupid mistakes and malicious mistakes. A lot of the applications for tax free status for political activities were from far right groups, and examiners took a short cut to organize their work that they, by now, woefully regret.

“The (inspector general’s) report says it in black and white, the ‘Determinations Unit employees stated that they considered the Tea Party criterion as a shorthand term for all potential political cases.’ These applications were singled out for their names and policy positions, not for their activities, as they should have been. Some of these political groups were delayed in getting their taxpayer subsidized status, and it was wrong.

“If we really want to root out the causes of this, we need to talk about campaign finance laws and the Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court that legalized secret political money in 2010. Applications for tax exempt status for secret money political organizations increased four-fold after the Supreme Court ruling. This small group of staff in the Cincinnati office screwed up by selecting applications based on name.”

McDermott: “This was wrong. Let’s take the time to find out how wrong it was, and how we got here. “

“But Congress — this committee — messed up by not giving them any clear criteria for what a real charitable organization is. Congress was blocked by a radical minority from providing criteria.

“As I watch this conversation shift from ‘find out what went wrong and fix it’ to ‘the IRS is broken so we should repeal Obamacare and close the government,’ I’m reminded that this is only partly about right and wrong. It’s also about a Republican storyline that supports their agenda.

“We need to add some truth here. The IRS can’t access your medical files, it is not inherently untrustworthy, and it it is not some Trojan horse for a fascist takeover . . .

“This was wrong. Let’s take the time to find out how wrong it was, and how we got there. That’s the only way we move forward and fix it.”